Hopping Projects – From Boston Scientific to GMI

Last week at Boston Scientific was full of practical experiences for me to reflect on. One notable topic was time management in a corporate setting. My two main projects are the supplier investigation and my team’s focus on finishing the test method validation phase on time. My part in the supplier investigation is rather individual – think of me in a lab using an instrument to take measurements. On the other hand, my responsibility to my team was to be available when they needed me, which broke up my productive time into odd chunks during the day.

Between these two projects, people were asking me to do multiple things at once. Naturally, I learned about prioritizing as I tried to get everything done within the workday. A few times, I brought my work home, and as a result, I felt a mixture of relieved preparedness and tiredness, both physical and mental. I was fascinated to learn that it was acceptable to push back due dates on lower-priority tasks in order to ensure that higher-priority ones were accomplished. Previously, I had seen due dates as more rigid in the corporate environment, but keeping the priorities in mind helped me understand how it all works together. Within the next year, I aim to develop in the area of prioritization and time management so I can have a more balanced and less chaotic relationship with engineering work in the medical device industry. Of course, time management is a hot topic for any student at the college level, but being an intern has given me the new context of time management in the corporate setting.

Now, this week may be my last in Process Development in Costa Rica, but my team is actually gearing up! When I joined, we were tackling test method validation, and now we’ve moved on to the next important and demanding phase of launching a product: design verification. It’s odd to be leaving my team as they’re accelerating work. Even so, there are other projects for me to think about next!

Guanacaste province is quite agricultural. Did you know they grow marshmallows there? (Joke credit to Sr. Prendas from Invenio!)

Camilo is interested in being part of the Invenio contingent of the DialOasis team.

Last Friday, I visited Invenio University and Liberia Hospital, which are our partners for the DialOasis project. They’re both located in Guanacaste province, which is a largely agricultural area in the northwest part of the country. I talked with students and faculty at Invenio and I’m looking forward to boosting productivity on the project by having a more collaborative relationship with the students. There’s plenty of interest as well as a sense of urgency, and I already followed up with a student who took the design course with us at the beginning of June and wants to be involved. (That’s when this picture was taken. I was so focused on gathering information when I was there that I forgot to take pictures with people in them!) It was fantastic to already know students at Invenio and be connected!

A faculty member from Invenio, Sr. Prendas, came with me to Liberia Hospital, which is the regional hospital that currently treats all peritoneal dialysis patients, including those who may be eligible DialOasis recipients. We talked with doctors about where we are and how we can be strategic with our efforts to maximize the effect of our efforts. The doctors were very generous with their time and I appreciated that we were already speaking candidly and practically. If we keep up the communication, a lot can be accomplished this year with DialOasis!

My next blog post will be a few weeks from now. There’s a short recess, and once we return to school in August for classes, I’ll be writing monthly updates. See you later!